The Faceless Girl
by A.S. Leif
Summary: OneShot. Once there was a girl. An unnoticed girl. A girl who was teased for her glasses. A girl who went to the bathroom to escape. A girl who heard a boy's voice. A girl who saw a pair of yellow eyes. A girl who died... This is her story.


_**The Faceless Girl  
**_

_This story is dedicated to DaughterofDarkness777, whose story Faceless Person, inspired this one._

Hogwarts. A castle housing dozens of growing witches and wizards, professors, portraits, ghosts, owls, cats, toads, a pesky poltergeist, and, as of recently, a monster. This castle, called home by so many, had once been the safest place in the magical world, so it was said. Clearly, they were wrong. But they did not know just how wrong they were.

Hogwarts was a place where students became a part of the family of their house: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin. It was a place where you could be accepted, you could learn, you could make life-long friendships. That was what it was _supposed_ to be in the opinion of one witch in particular as she raced down the hallway, tears cascading down her face. Hogwarts was _supposed_ to be a place where people treated you fairly. Where who your family was didn't matter. Where the people cared about you. _But it isn't,_ she sobbed to herself, not bothering to look to see if anyone followed her.

No, she didn't need to look, because the physical presence of her tormentor would not have mattered in the least. She was already plagued by the harsh, taunting laughter that rang through her ears. By the cruel, smirking look in the eyes that lingered in her mind's eye. Bythe accusing, spiteful finger pointed at her with all the finality of death itself. Which, sadly as she hadn't known, was soon to find her.

Things at Hogwarts had not been going well for this student. She'd been Sorted into Ravenclaw two years ago, but had made very few friends, and not even one true one. All the others were too busy with their books andclevergames of chess, not paying any mind to the girl whose intelligence was nothing special. Though they ignored her, at least they didn't taunt her or ridicule her for being a muggle-born or, as the Slytherins called her, a mudblood. No, her housemates merely nodded to her in the common room as a means of greeting, not bothering to waste their time with any conversation. The Gryffindors ignored her in the halls, bumping into her without even realizing it. The Hufflepuffs all had their own friends and she in turnfled from them because her tormentor was from that house. Her tormentor's name wasOliver Quanbee.

So she went through her school days overlooked by her peers and her professors, just another face in the crowd. Actually, not even that. She was faceless. Two years in and still nobody outside her house could even come close to guessing her name or her level of education. With mouse-brown hair braided in two long pigtails that fluttered behind her limply as she ran through the halls, a round, freckled face, quiet brown eyes that hid behind the thick rims of her circular glasses, and a straight-as-a-board and unattractive figure, Marlene Myrtle was the faceless girl of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Her eyes were trickling heavy tears that caused her eyes to turn red and puffy, and her face hideously blotchy as she fled from the teasing laughter that Oliver had been inflicting on her for the past ten minutes when he and his bullying friends had trapped her in the corridor after Charms. It was a routine, so why couldn't she just avoid it? They always got her after Charms or Potions, the most secluded classroom areas, and it was always teasing about her appearance, or her family, or her grades, or her nervous, squeaking voice that she was noted for. Today it had been her glasses. Oh _why_ couldn't her mother have bought her new ones for this year rather than a useless cat? Why, why, why, why, _WHY_? Maybe without these hideous things that could probably pick up a radio station, Marlene might have been able to make a friend this year. But no... she got teased instead. And what did she do in response? The same thing as always: run.

This time, she didn't run back to her dormitory like she usually did. Maybe if she had, things would not have ended so gravely. Because of the rumors of attacks by the monster in the recently opened and supposedly mythicalChamber of Secrets, students were forbidden from going anywhere alone, but seeing as how no one ever noticed her Marlene was able to run to the Ravenclaw wing of the castle and cry alone in the second-year girls' dormitory.

But today, for some unknown reason, she fled to the girls bathroom. Why had she gone there? She didn't know. Perhaps it was a twist of fate's cruel hand that she should go there, so she would be able to give answers to a boy with a lightning-bolt scarwho would appear in that very bathroom fifty longyears later.

Marlene ran into the bathroom and shut the door heavily behind her, it slammed loudly over her sobs. Shaking and crying, she dashed into one of the stalls and sat down miserably on a toilet seat, waiting for the harsh laughter to stop echoing in her ears, for those mean eyes to get out of her head, or for the tears to stop flowing. As she cried and sniffed and shook, she lost track of time, and was unaware that her Transfiguration teacher, Professor Dumbledore, had noticed that she was not in class and had sent someone to look for her. And she was blissfully unaware of the sixth-year Slytherin prefect who was slinking up to the bathroom with malicious intent in his mind and a glittering sharpness in his cold grey eyes.

She heard the door to the bathroom open, heard footsteps as she tried to quiet her retched sobbing, wishing it would all just end; all of it. All the ridicule, all the queasy fear she felt at the sight of Oliver, all of the pain, all of it... She heard a voice, a boy's voice, saying something funny. A kind of made-up language, it seemed. Angry that a _boy_ had come in to a _girls'_ bathroom, while she was _crying_ no less, Marlene steeled herself and put a glare on her face as she stood up, unaware of the moving sink and the scrape of scales on the tile. Furiously she yanked the bathroom stall door open... and her wish came true.

It all ended as she gazed into a pair of great big yellow eyes.

And she died.


End file.
